Christophe Strobbe wrote:
> Then what is a screen reader (or a text-to-speech program used by a
> dyslexic
> user) supposed to do with the "zxx"?
Nothing. I think you've hit on a good test I think, if a screen-reader
can be expected to do something with it, it isn't zxx.
> Why couldn't I write XHTML code like the one below?
>
> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="fr">
> <!-- ... -->
> <p>Voici le fameux <span xml:lang="en">hello world</span> en Java.</p>
> <code xml:lang="en">
> public static void main(String[] args) {
> System.out.println("<span xml:lang="fr">bonjour le monde!</span>");
> }
> }
> </code>
Yes, this is preferable.
I was thinking poorly about computer languages earlier, forgetting that
any language higher than machine code is for humans more than for
machines. Strictly we could consider high-level languages to be a sort
of non-linguistic data that is based on linguistic data, but until there
is a mechanism for saying, e.g. "computer-readable code based on
English" then "public static void main" is best described as "English".